Prelude
Once or twice people have asked me about a story I related in the course of a sermon I gave a few years ago. It is the story of a Christmas Eve I experienced. Here it is.
Aria
I write many sermons, as I have written much of this one, in a coffee shop on Whyte Avenue. There are no administrative calls or knocks on the door to disturb me. But there are other things to disturb me there. People. If it is difficult to preach a sermon isolated from people, it is perhaps more difficult to write one isolated from people. On Wednesday mornings at nine o clock there is a group who get together to share their stories of misery or happiness, more often the former than the latter. They struggle with addictions. I have become the informal “chaplain” of that group. One of their number is a 45 year old man we shall call Steve. Steve came from a rather unfortunate past and carried that misfortune into his present. He had been from time to time a carpenter – he was trained as a furniture maker. I asked him almost a year ago about a gift for Alisa, my wife – perhaps an anniversary present. I had the idea of a chest, something into which our family could place our various treasures in the years to come.
He drew a sketch of a wooden chest, I asked him to build it for me. He described the wood, the size, the time it would take to build and finish, and the cost. It wasn’t quite ready for our anniversary, which was in August. Throughout the fall Steve continued to work on it sporadically, and I from time to time would visit him in his small shop and check on the progress. As October and November came around, I was beginning to panic, hoping that it would be ready for Christmas. Not having an anniversary or a Christmas present in the same year would be bad news for any husband. In the days leading up to Christmas, I was in my new parish, thinking of all the details I needed to tidy up for the festive season. In the back of my mind was the horrifying thought that my Christmas present to Alisa would not be ready, and that I would be in the domestic doghouse for quite some time. Steve and I traded messages on the 22nd, and 23rd and the morning of the 24th of December. In St Andrew’s that evening we had a wonderful Christmas Eve service at 7 pm. Alisa’s sisters had come home from the States and the house of God was a full place that night. We all drove home, the kids were in bed, everything was perfect.
At 10:30 pm this past Christmas Eve, as many were either drifting off to a happy and excited sleep, or dressing up for an extravagant midnight celebration of the birth of a King, I went to meet a carpenter in his shop.
Steve had finished the wooden chest. It was ready. He told me with pride all the details of the craftsmanship; how to care for the wood, how to oil it so its colour would radiate, how it would last, as he said, to give to my grandchildren. He was proud of his work. We sat in a small room and I handed him a Christmas card, and small box of chocolates, which he said he couldn’t eat because of his diabetes, which was complicated by his drinking. We drank some coffee and chatted. There are four churches within a stone’s throw of Steve’s place. I told him about our Christmas service at St Andrew’s, about God and Jesus, about love and prayer. We chatted some more. He told me that he had been to church a few times as a boy, and he had even met some members of the clergy. His experience of ‘church’ had not moved him. I did not convert Steve.
Instead we loaded the wooden chest into the back of my Jeep Cherokee, and I drove off to place it among a large pile of gifts in our living room. I went back to the companionship of a loving wife, with two beautiful children, and a house full with anticipation of the large extended family feast we would have the next day. Steve went back into his shop and closed the door.
It was not the first time a carpenter
had been abandoned
by one who called himself
a disciple.
“He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
Postlude
While I was away at a camp, Steve died. I found out about his death a month after it happened. I don’t know what Steve was thinking at the hour of his death.
If there is room for another thief or two on a cross to be with Him in Paradise, I hope it’s Steve and me.
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